Macy’s Private Brand Strategy for a Multi Generational Customer | NRF 2026

Hello everyone.

Welcome back.

We are live here at NRF in New York.

This is omnitalk Retail.

I'm Anne Mazinga.

And I'm Chris Walton.

And we have another extraordinary guest here for you all to say hello to.

Standing in between us we have Emily Arusha Hillakew, the SVP of private brands at Macy's and also one of our OMNI Stars of 2025.

Emily, welcome.

Thank you so much.

Thank you both.

Yeah, yeah, thank you.

And it's already 2026.

It hasn't been that long since we gave you that.

I know.

It was a good start to the year, right?

Yes.

Pleasant surprise.

Yeah.

So let's hear what does an Omnistar like yourself do?

What does your job entail?

It's a great question.

Many facets run all private brands at Macy's, which includes all brand management.

So the people and the voices that build the brands, the trend research and forecasting team, our amazing product design team as well as our art team and a couple others that are sort of, you know, magic makers within the organization.

But it's a team of about 150 people and we run a portfolio of.

25 brands which are exceptional by the way.

I'm a big, big fan.

I want to ask you Emily, like, what do you think needs to be true as you're thinking about the landscape of private brand for Macy's to continue to do as well as it has and for your team to continue to have success the way that you've had?

That's a great question.

I mean obviously one of our strategic initiatives as we continue on this growth path with Macy's Inc. Is what we're calling a bold new chapter.

And there are some very important aspects to that bold new chapter strategy that private brand folds in quite well.

You know, the customer has told us they're looking for inspiration, they're looking for trend relevant product, they're looking for value, they're looking for quality.

And honestly they're looking for a joyous experience that they can take home with them that will become part of their lives forever.

And so the role for private brands is to complement and fill the white space within the broader brand portfolio for Macy's.

And as you've probably seen, we are seeing such success with our brand portfolio collectively because of the national brands continue to elevate, private brands continue to elevate.

We launch new brands, we tinker with current brands to make sure that they're as customer relevant as possible.

And you know, we're on a multi year Journey, which has been really exciting and the customer is responding quite well.

So to that point, you were on a panel earlier today, am I not mistaken?

Yes, you were.

And I want to make sure I get the panel's name right.

So the key theme of that session was luring a price conscious guest with private brands that do that well.

You like that?

Yes, I did.

Well.

So I'm curious, what were some of the main messages you shared with the audience around luring a price conscious guest?

Price conscious guest.

I mean it's such a relative term.

But one of the things we talked about in the panel was the customer of today has so much choice, right?

And they're looking for those universal truths in the product and the experiences that I mentioned before.

But the beautiful thing about Macy's that we have continued to talk about is we service a multi generational shopper.

We have over 40 million active and live customers within the private brand sector.

3/4 plus of the customers shop with private brands.

They shop three times more often on an annual basis and they've got some of our highest customer lifetime value.

So we talked a lot about kind of the fueling that engine collectively through a bold new chapter of the total brand matrix that Macy's continues to service.

And one of the things that I shared is you can buy a La Mer eye cream at Macy's, but you can also buy some really amazing on 34th Basics, some Inc.

Jeans, some hotel collection white sheets.

Right?

And that's the beauty of being a modern marketplace that you really can tier up or tear down no matter what you're looking for.

And that's the beauty of Macy's.

Well, Emily, one of the things that you've done really well, especially just in the last few months, is kind of bring in these collaborations too.

How do you think about this theme of luring the price conscious consumer?

How do you think about the right people to collaborate with, to build some of the brands that you have and to give people across all, all spectrum or all across the spectrum the ability to have this like really uniquely designed piece at an affordable price.

I think one of the beautiful things about private brands is, and our private brands, they are unique and distinctively ownable by Macy's.

Right?

And so that the goal is to continue to put those brands out in front of more people and to become more loyal with our current customer.

One of the things that we're thinking about is, you know, now that we've got the architecture of the brand portfolio in place, introducing outside voices, culturally relevant people that the customer can aspire to, want to connect with through one of our private brands and through one of the products.

So most recently in September, we celebrated the 40th anniversary of Inc. One of our most beloved brands.

40 years.

Yes, 40 years.

I know.

Isn't that wow, crazy?

And we partnered in celebration with Christian Siriano, who also was turning 40 years old last year.

So nice combination, but someone that stands for values that are very similar to what Macy stands for.

We want access, we want inspiration, we want experience, we want trend right and relevant product.

And so Christian was an amazing person to bring on board for collaboration, not only to act as our creative director around the campaign to create exclusive products that you could only make at Macy's.

And then one of the awesome things is as we were getting to know Christian and he now has become a friend of Macy's, we started to ideate on how we could leverage the power of Macy's as a, as a experiential sort of expert and give him space within our store to host his New York Fashion Week show for fall, which was one of the first times a New York Fashion Week show has been held in a retailer in partnership with a brand.

And I will tell you, the way that we transformed the basement of the Herald Square store into the magical universe of Christian Siriano was incredible.

So just a jumping off point for a lot more things that are coming within the private brand space.

That's amazing.

And could customers come to that so.

Customers could see because it was live in the store.

So that's also kind of interesting.

Not only did we window shop it.

Yeah, window shop it.

We took over all of the store windows on the front side of the building with the collaboration just to kind of denote that we were doing things with Christian.

But yes, if you wanted to peer down into the fashion show as a customer, you could.

And it was also one of the biggest fashion shows with over 6, 700 people, which was a combination of customers as well as fans of Christian and fans of Macy's.

I love that everyone gets to have access to Fashion Week, not just the fashion editors.

Exactly.

Well, let's shift gears a little bit.

We're asking a lot of people here at NRF this year because it's such an important topic about AI And I'm curious, Emily, where are you seeing some of the biggest benefits of AI in your day to day?

Sure.

I mean, there's several ways that we're leveraging AI at Macy's, but specifically to my world, one of the things that we are using AI platforms and the capability for is nuanced storytelling.

So as you know, when you start the end to end process, it typically starts with a brand concept.

That brand concept needs to have a story.

It needs to have tactical elements that the design team, the merchant team, the global sourcing team can take and run through the end to end calendar.

So we're leveraging it quite, quite a bit to kind of nuance and triangulate multiple points of information into compelling storytelling.

In addition to that, our digital platforms are starting to test using different AI methodologies to do more personalization and selective selling, which we are piloting with private brand.

So that's been really exciting to see customer reaction to as we've started to implement that because as we know, the goal is to raise the basket, raise the aur, inspire our customers and leveraging the intel within AI is helping us to do that.

That's amazing.

All right, well, let's get you out of here on this.

So 2026, we're two weeks in.

I think two or three weeks in.

I lost count already.

Yes.

What can we expect from you this year?

What can you expect from private brands this year?

Well, first of all, you can expect a lot from Macy's this year.

You know, entering into what is the next phase of our bold new chapter.

You'll see more magic.

We have the 100th year of the parade that we will celebrate this year, the 50th anniversary of the fireworks.

So we're calling it the year of celebration, which is really, really exciting.

But within that, you will see the private brand portfolio continue to be nuanced in relationship with the national brand portfolio.

You will see us continue to improve our current brands that we know the customer loves.

You will see us build even more quality and value into those brands.

You will see more noteworthy collaborations.

We have a very buzzworthy collaboration coming in the womenswear space on the first half of the year and you'll start to see us try and nuance our speed to market calendar in a way that gets us much closer in so that we're employing trends and newness in a much more strategic way.

Awesome.

Well, Emily, thank you so much for sharing an update with all of us.

Thank you for being one of our omnistars and thank you to Vuzion for making all of our coverage here at NRF possible for you.

Stay tuned.

More to come today and until our.

Next interview, be careful out there.